Two Problems With Dignitas Infinita

Dr Feser is co-author with Joseph Bessette of By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment against Francis's heresy.

From Edward Feser, PhD

This week the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) published the Declaration Dignitas Infinita, on the topic of human dignity. I am as weary as anyone of the circumstance that it has now become common for new documents issued by the Vatican to be met with fault-finding. But if the faults really are there, then we oughtn’t to blame the messenger. And this latest document exhibits two serious problems: one with its basic premise, and the other with some of the conclusions it draws from it.

Capital punishment

To begin with the latter, I hasten to add that most of the conclusions are unobjectionable. They are simply reiterations of longstanding Catholic teaching on abortion, euthanasia, our obligations to the poor and to migrants, and so on. The document is especially helpful and courageous in strongly condemning surrogacy and gender theory, which will win it no praise from the progressives the pope is often accused of being too ready to placate.

There are other passages that are more problematic but perhaps best interpreted as imprecise rather than novel. For example, it is stated that “it is very difficult nowadays to invoke the rational criteria elaborated in earlier centuries to speak of the possibility of a ‘just war.’” That might seem to mark the beginnings of a reversal of traditional teaching that has been reiterated as recently as the current Catechism. However, Dignitas Infinita also “reaffirm[s] the inalienable right to self-defense and the responsibility to protect those whose lives are threatened,” which are themes that recent statements of just war doctrine have already emphasized.

The one undeniably gravely problematic conclusion Dignitas Infinita draws from its key premise concerns the death penalty. Pope Francis already came extremely close to declaring capital punishment intrinsically immoral when he changed the Catechism in 2018, so that it now says that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.” But that left open the possibility that what was meant is that it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person unless certain circumstances hold, such as the practical impossibility of protecting others from the offender without executing him (even if this reading is a bit strained). The new DDF document goes further and flatly declares that “the death penalty… violates the inalienable dignity of every person, regardless of the circumstances” (emphasis added).

This simply cannot be reconciled with scripture and the consistent teaching of all popes who have spoken on the matter prior to Pope Francis. That includes Pope St. John Paul II, despite his well-known opposition to capital punishment. In Evangelium Vitae, even John Paul taught only:

Punishment… ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today however, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent.

And the original version of the Catechism promulgated by John Paul II stated:

The traditional teaching of the Church has acknowledged as well-founded the right and duty of the legitimate public authority to punish malefactors by means of penalties commensurate with the gravity of the crime, not excluding, in cases of extreme gravity, the death penalty. (2266)

In short, John Paul II (like scripture and like every previous pope who spoke on the matter) held that some circumstances can justify capital punishment, whereas Pope Francis now teaches that no circumstances can ever justify capital punishment. That is a direct contradiction. Now, Joseph Bessette and I, in our book By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment, have shown that the legitimacy in principle of the death penalty has in fact been taught infallibly by scripture and the tradition of the Church. I’ve also made the case for this claim on other occasions, such as in this article. Hence, if Pope Francis is indeed teaching that capital punishment is intrinsically wrong, it is clear that it is he who is in the wrong, rather than scripture and previous popes.

If defenders of Pope Francis deny this, then they are logically committed to holding that those previous popes erred. Either way, some pope or other has erred, so that it will make no sense for defenders of Pope Francis to pretend that they are simply upholding papal magisterial authority. To defend Pope Francis is to reject the teaching of the previous popes; to defend those previous popes is to reject the teaching of Pope Francis. There is no way to defend all of them at once.

This is in no way inconsistent with the doctrine of papal infallibility, because that doctrine concerns ex cathedra definitions, and nothing Pope Francis has said amounts to such a definition (as Cardinal Fernández, Prefect of the DDF, has explicitly acknowledged). But it refutes those who claim that all papal teaching on faith and morals is infallible, and those who hold that, even if not all such teaching is infallible, no pope has actually taught error. For that reason alone, Dignitas Infinita is a document of historic significance, albeit not for the reasons Pope Francis or Cardinal Fernández would have intended.

Dignity and the death penalty

The other problem with the document, I have said, concerns the premise with which it begins. That premise is referred to in its title, and it is stated in its opening lines as follows:

Every human person possesses an infinite dignity, inalienably grounded in his or her very being, which prevails in and beyond every circumstance, state, or situation the person may ever encounter. This principle, which is fully recognizable even by reason alone, underlies the primacy of the human person and the protection of human rights… [Thus] the Church… always insist[s] on “the primacy of the human person and the defense of his or her dignity beyond every circumstance.”

The most striking part of this passage – indeed, I would say the most shocking part of it – is the assertion that human dignity is infinite. I will come back to that. But first note the other aspects of its teaching. The Declaration implies that this dignity follows from human nature itself, rather than from grace. That is implied by its being fully knowable by reason alone (as opposed to special divine revelation). It is ontological rather than acquired in nature, reflecting what a human being is rather than what he or she does. For this reason, it cannot be lost no matter what one does, in “every circumstance, state, or situation the person may ever encounter.” And again, the dignity human beings are said in this way to possess is also claimed to be infinite in nature.

It is no surprise, then, that the Declaration should later go on to say what it does about the death penalty. According to Pope Francis’s revision of the Catechism, the death penalty is “an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.” But Dignitas Infinita says this dignity exists in “every circumstance, state, or situation the person may ever encounter.” That implies that it is retained no matter what evil the person has committed, and no matter how dangerous he is to others. Thus, if we must “always insist on… the primacy of the human person and the defense of his or her dignity beyond every circumstance,” it would follow that the death penalty would be impermissible in every circumstance.

This alone entails that there is something wrong with the Declaration’s premises. For it is, again, the infallible teaching of scripture and all previous popes that the death penalty can under some circumstances be justifiable. Hence, if the Declaration’s teaching on human dignity implies otherwise, it is that teaching that is flawed, not scripture and not two millennia of consistent papal teaching.

There is also the problem that, in defense of its conception of human dignity, the Declaration appeals to scriptural passages from, among other places, Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Romans. But all four of these books contain explicit endorsements of capital punishment! (See By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed for detailed discussion.) Hence, their conception of human dignity is clearly not the same as that of the Declaration. Perhaps the defender of the Declaration will suggest that these scriptural texts erred on the specific topic of capital punishment. One problem with that is that the Church holds that scripture cannot teach error on a matter of faith or morals. So, this attempt to get around the difficulty would be heterodox. But another problem is that this move would undermine the Declaration’s own use of these scriptural texts. For if Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Romans are wrong about something as serious the death penalty, why should we believe they are right about anything else, such as human dignity?

At this point the defender of the Declaration might suggest that we are misunderstanding these scriptural passages if we think they support capital punishment. One problem with this suggestion is that it is asinine on its face. Jewish and Christian theologians alike have for millennia consistently understood the Old Testament to sanction capital punishment, and the Church has always understood both the Old Testament passages and Romans to sanction it. To pretend that it is only now that we finally understand them accurately defies common sense (and rests on utterly implausible arguments, as Bessette and I show in our book). But it also contradicts what the Church has said about its own understanding of scripture. The Church claims that on matters of scriptural interpretation, no one is free to contradict the unanimous opinion of the Fathers or the consistent understanding of the Church over millennia. And the Fathers and consistent tradition of the Church hold that scripture teaches that the death penalty can under some circumstances be licit. (See the book for more about this subject too.)

Infinite dignity?

But even putting all of that aside, attributing “infinite dignity” to human beings is highly problematic. If we are speaking strictly, it is obvious that only God can be said to have infinite dignity. Dignitas conveys “worth,” “worthiness,” “merit,” “excellence,” “honor.” Try replacing “dignity” with these words in the phrase “infinite dignity,” and ask whether the result can be applied to human beings. Do human beings have “infinite merit,” “infinite excellence,” “infinite worthiness”? The very idea seems blasphemous. Only God can have any of these things.

Or consider the attributes that impart special dignity to people, such as authority, goodness, or wisdom, where the more perfectly they manifest these attributes, the greater is their dignity. Can human beings be said to possess “infinite authority,” “infinite goodness,” or “infinite wisdom”? Obviously not, and obviously it is only God to whom these things can be attributed. So, how could human beings have infinite dignity?

Aquinas makes several relevant remarks. He tells us that “the equality of distributive justice consists in allotting various things to various persons in proportion to their personal dignity” (Summa Theologiae II-II.63.1). Naturally, that implies that some people have more dignity than others. So, how could all human beings have infinite dignity (which would imply that none has more than any other)? He also says that “by sinning man departs from the order of reason, and consequently falls away from the dignity of his manhood” (Summa Theologiae II-II.64.2). But if a person can lose his dignity, how can all people have infinite dignity?

Some will say that what Aquinas is talking about in such passages is only acquired dignity rather than ontological dignity – that is to say, dignity that reflects what we do or some special status we contingently come to have (which can change), rather than dignity that reflects what we are by nature. But that will not work as an interpretation of other things Aquinas says. For instance, he notes that “the dignity of the divine nature excels every other dignity” (Summa Theologiae I.29.3). Obviously, he is talking about God’s ontological dignity here. And naturally, God has infinite dignity if anything does. So if his ontological dignity excels ours, how could we possibly have infinite ontological dignity?

Aquinas also writes:

Now it is more dignified for a thing to exist in something more dignified than itself than to exist in its own right. And so by this very fact the human nature is more dignified in Christ than in us, since in us it has its own personhood in the sense that it exists in its own right, whereas in Christ it exists in the person of the Word. (Summa Theologiae III.2.2, Freddoso translation)

Now, if the dignity of human nature is increased by virtue of its being united to Christ in the Incarnation, how could it already be infinite by nature? Then there is the fact that Aquinas explicitly denies that human dignity is infinite:

But no mere man has the infinite dignity required to satisfy justly an offence against God. Therefore there had to be a man of infinite dignity who would undergo the penalty for all so as to satisfy fully for the sins of the whole world. Therefore the only-begotten Word of God, true God and Son of God, assumed a human nature and willed to suffer death in it so as to purify the whole human race indebted by sin. (De Rationibis Fidei, Chapter 7)

To be sure, Aquinas also allows that there is a sense in which some things other than God can have infinite dignity, when he writes:

From the fact that (a) Christ’s human nature is united to God, and that (b) created happiness is the enjoyment of God, and that (c) the Blessed Virgin is the mother of God, it follows that they have a certain infinite dignity that stems from the infinite goodness which is God. (Summa Theologiae I.25.6, Freddoso translation)

But note that the infinite dignity in question derives from a certain special relation to God’s infinite dignity – involving the Incarnation, the beatific vision, and Mary’s divine motherhood respectively – and not from human nature as such.

Relevant too are Aquinas’s remarks on the topic of infinity. He says that “besides God nothing can be infinite,” for “it is against the nature of a made thing to be absolutely infinite” so that “He cannot make anything to be absolutely infinite” (Summa Theologiae I.7.2). How, then, could human beings by nature have infinite dignity?

Some might respond by saying that Aquinas is not infallible, but that would miss the point. For it is not just that Aquinas’s theology has tremendous authority within Catholicism (though it does have that, and that is hardly unimportant here). It is that he is making points from Catholic teaching itself about the nature of dignity, the nature of human beings, and the nature of God that make it highly problematic to speak of human beings as having “infinite dignity.” It is no good just to say that he is wrong. The defender of the Declaration owes us an argument showing that he is wrong, or showing that talk of “infinite dignity” can be reconciled with what he says.

Possible defenses?

One suggestion some have made on Twitter is that further remarks Aquinas makes about infinity can resolve the conflict. For in the passage just quoted, he also writes:

Things other than God can be relatively infinite, but not absolutely infinite. For with regard to infinite as applied to matter, it is manifest that everything actually existing possesses a form; and thus its matter is determined by form. But because matter, considered as existing under some substantial form, remains in potentiality to many accidental forms, which is absolutely finite can be relatively infinite; as, for example, wood is finite according to its own form, but still it is relatively infinite, inasmuch as it is in potentiality to an infinite number of shapes. But if we speak of the infinite in reference to form, it is manifest that those things, the forms of which are in matter, are absolutely finite, and in no way infinite. If, however, any created forms are not received into matter, but are self-subsisting, as some think is the case with angels, these will be relatively infinite, inasmuch as such kinds of forms are not terminated, nor contracted by any matter. But because a created form thus subsisting has being, and yet is not its own being, it follows that its being is received and contracted to a determinate nature. Hence it cannot be absolutely infinite. (Summa Theologiae I.7.2)

What Aquinas is saying here is that there is a sense in which matter is relatively infinite, and a sense in which an angel is relatively infinite. The sense in which matter is relatively infinite is that it can at least in principle take on, successively, one form after another ad infinitum. The sense in which an angel is relatively infinite is that it is not limited by matter.

But there are several problems with the suggestion that this passage can help us to make sense of the notion that human beings have “infinite dignity.” First, Aquinas explicitly says that things “the forms of which are in matter, are absolutely finite, and in no way infinite.” For example, while the matter that makes up a particular tree is relatively infinite insofar as it can take on different forms ad infinitum (the form of a desk, the form of a chair, and so on) the tree itself qua having the form of a tree is in no way infinite. Now, a human being is, like a tree, a composite of form and matter. Hence, Aquinas’s remarks here would imply that, even if the matter that makes up the body is relatively infinite insofar as it can successively take on different forms ad infinitum, the human being himself is not in any way infinite. Obviously, then, this would tell against taking human nature to be even relatively infinite in its dignity.

Furthermore, it’s not clear how the specific examples Aquinas gives are supposed to be relevant to the question at hand in the first place. The sense in which he says matter is relatively infinite is, again, that it can take on different forms successively ad infinitum – first one form, then a second, then a third, and so on. But of course, at any particular point in time, matter does not have an infinite number of forms. So, how would this provide a model for human beings having “infinite dignity”? Is the idea that they have only finite dignity at any particular point in time, but will keep having it at later points in time without end? Surely that is not what is meant by “infinite dignity.” It would entail that even something with the least dignity possible at any particular point in time would have “infinite dignity” as long as it simply persisted with that minimal dignity forever!

Nor does the angel example help. Again, the sense in which angels are relatively infinite, Aquinas says, is that they are not limited by matter. But human beings are limited by matter. So, this is no help in explaining how we could be even relatively infinite in dignity.

Another, sillier suggestion some have made on Twitter is that we can make sense of human beings having “infinite dignity” in light of set theory, which tells us that some infinities can be larger than others. The idea seems to be that while God has infinite dignity, we too can intelligibly be said to have it, so long as God’s dignity has to do with a larger infinity than ours.

The problem with this is that the “infinity” that is attributed to God and to his dignity (and to human dignity, for that matter) has nothing to do with the infinities studied by set theory. Set theory is about collections of objects (such as numbers), which might be infinite in size. But when we say that God is infinite, we’re not talking about a collection any kind. We’re not saying, for example, that God’s infinite power has something to do with him possessing an infinite collection of powers. What is meant is merely that he has causal power to do or to make whatever is intrinsically possible. And his infinite dignity too has nothing to do with any sort of collection (such as an infinitely large collection of units of dignity, whatever that would mean). Set theory is simply irrelevant.

Another defense that has been suggested is to appeal to Pope St. John Paul II’s having once used the phrase “infinite dignity” in an Angelus address in 1980. Indeed, the Declaration itself makes note of this. But there are several problems here. First, John Paul II’s remark was merely a passing comment made in the course a little-known informal address of little magisterial weight that was devoted to another topic. It was not a carefully worded formal theological treatment of the nature of human dignity, specifically. Nor did John Paul put any special emphasis on the phrase or draw momentous conclusions from it, the way the new Declaration does. For example, he never concluded that, since human dignity is “infinite,” the death penalty must be ruled out under every circumstance. On the contrary, despite his strong personal opposition to the death penalty, he always acknowledged that there could be circumstances where it was permissible, and that that was the Church’s traditional teaching. There is no reason whatsoever to take the Angelus address reference to be anything more than a loosely worded off-the-cuff remark. Moreover, even if it were more than that, that would not make the problems I’ve been setting out here magically disappear.

Some have suggested that the Declaration’s remark about the death penalty does not in fact amount to saying that capital punishment is intrinsically wrong. What it entails, they claim, is only that it is always intrinsically contrary to human dignity. But that, they say, leaves it open that it may sometimes be permissible to do what is contrary to human dignity.

But there are two reasons why this cannot be right. First, Dignitas Infinita does not say that what violates our dignity is unacceptable except when such-and-such conditions hold. On the contrary, it says that the Church “always insist[s] on… the defense of [the human person’s] dignity beyond every circumstance.” It says that man’s “infinite dignity” is “inviolable,” that it “prevails in and beyond every circumstance, state, or situation the person may ever encounter,” and that our respect for it must be “unconditional.” It repeatedly emphasizes that “circumstances” are irrelevant to what a respect for dignity requires of us, and it does so precisely because it claims that our dignity is “infinite.” Asserting that human dignity has such radical “no exceptions” implications is the whole point of the Declaration, the whole point of its making a big deal of the phrase “infinite dignity.”

Second, the Declaration makes a special point of lumping in the death penalty with evils such as “murder, genocide, abortion, [and] euthanasia.” It says: “Here, one should also mention the death penalty, for this also violates the inalienable dignity of every person, regardless of the circumstances.” Obviously, if the death penalty really does violate human dignity under every circumstance in just the way murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, etc. do, then it is no less absolutely ruled out than they are. And obviously, the Declaration would not allow us to say that there are cases where murder, genocide, abortion, and euthanasia might be allowable despite their being affronts to human dignity.

Hyperbole?

The best defense that some have made of the Declaration is that the phrase “infinite dignity” is mere hyperbole. But though this is the best defense, that does not make it a good defense. First of all, magisterial documents should use terms with precision. This is especially true of a document coming from the DDF, whose job is precisely to clarify matters of doctrine. It is simply scandalous for a document intended to clarify a doctrinal matter – especially one that we are told has been in preparation for years – to deploy a key theological term in a loose and potentially highly misleading way (and, indeed, to put special emphasis on this loose meaning, even in the very title of the document!)

But second, the idea that the phrase is meant as mere hyperbole is simply not a natural reading of the Declaration. For it is not just that special emphasis is put on the phrase itself. It is also that special emphasis is put on the radical implications of the phrase. We are told that it is precisely because human dignity is “infinite” that the moral conclusions asserted by the Declaration hold “beyond all circumstances,” “beyond every circumstance,” “in all circumstances,” “regardless of the circumstances,” and so on. If you don’t take the “infinite” part seriously, then you lose the grounds for taking the “beyond all circumstances” parts seriously. They go hand in hand. Hence, the “hyperbole” reading simply undermines the whole point of the document.

That this extreme language of man’s “infinite dignity” has now led the pope to condemn the death penalty in an absolute way – and thereby to contradict scripture and all previous papal teaching on the subject – shows just how grave are the consequences of using theological language imprecisely. And this may not be the end of it. Asked at a press conference on the Declaration about the implications of man’s “infinite dignity” for the doctrine of Hell, Cardinal Fernández did not deny the doctrine. But he also said: “’With all the limits that our freedom truly has, might it not be that Hell is empty?’ This is the question that Pope Francis sometimes asks.” Asked about the Catechism’s teaching that homosexual desire is “intrinsically disordered,” the cardinal said: “It’s a very strong expression, and it needs to be explained a great deal. Perhaps we could find an expression that is even clearer, to understand what we mean… But it is true that the expression could find other more suitable words.” When churchmen put special emphasis on the idea that human dignity is infinite, then there is a wide range of traditional Catholic teaching that they are bound to be tempted to soften or find some way to work around.

High-flown rhetoric about human dignity has, in any event, always been especially prone to abuse. As Allan Bloom once wrote, “the very expression dignity of man, even when Pico della Mirandola coined it in the fifteenth century, had a blasphemous ring to it” (The Closing of the American Mind, p. 180). Similarly, Jacques Barzun pointed out that “[Pico’s] word dignity can of course be interpreted as flouting the gospel’s call to humility and denying the reality of sin. Humanism is accordingly charged with inverting the relation between man and God” (From Dawn to Decadence, p. 60).

Some historians would judge this unfair to Pico himself, but my point is not about him. Rather, it is about how modern people in general, from the Renaissance onward, have gotten progressively more drunk on the idea of their own dignity – and, correspondingly, less and less cognizant of the fact that what is most grave about sin is not that it dishonors us, but that it dishonors God. This, and not their own dignity, is what modern people most need reminding of. Hence, while it is not wrong to speak of human dignity, one must be cautious and always put the accent on the divine dignity rather than on our dignity. I submit that sticking a word like “infinite” in front of the latter accomplishes the reverse of this.

And I submit that a sure sign that the rhetoric of human dignity has now gone too far is that it has led the highest authorities in the Church to contradict the teaching of the word of God itself (on the topic of the death penalty). Such an error is possible when popes do not speak ex cathedra. But it is extremely rare, and always gravely scandalous.